The spontaneous generation of football.

Some games are so simple that I think they were certain to be invented, no matter what. Football is one of them.

Today, I watched my five year old son Fintan playing with a ball with his younger brother Tiarnan and another boy of his own age. The ball they had was a rather unusual one: not much less than a yard across, it was a giant toy for them. It was bright red, which made it rather easy to see against the green foliage and grass on which they played.

Now, what was interesting about the way they played is how, something akin to football emerged spontaneously from them. I know, for sure, that my kids haven't watched football, so it is not something they are familiar with. Yet, football like behaviour soon emerged.

At first, they kicked the ball from one to the other, then somehow along the way, the rules changed. Suddenly, when the ball ended up in a flower bed, Fintan cried out: "Two points!"

For reasons, unknown to me, this act was apparently suddenly worth two points - unless I had missed the first point.

It wasn't an arbitrary decision to mark that area as point bearing - for it formed a natural boundary to the garden area in that direction, cutting a wandering line across the grass and playground for perhaps fifty metres.

The game continued. It wasn't long before the other boy cheered himself when the ball crossed a line between some trees in the opposite direction. Again, it was easy to construct an imaginary line across the space between them, of some fifty metres or so. These were big "goals" they were dealing with - hardly easy to defend.

All the other behaviours of football were soon to be seen: tackling, chasing after the one with the ball, intercepting it and so on. It all emerged purely as a function of competing for the ball and trying to prevent it from crossing the respective imaginary line.

Football, on this evidence, is as inevitable as any game could be. Simply inventing a ball and putting people in competition for it leads almost inexorably to all the football behaviours fans will know. The "rules" seem quite inevitable.

It was fun to watch the game evolve and complexify in the space of forty-five minutes. By the end of it, it was, in every way, quite a strong echo of football - yet it had all begun with two boys passing a giant red ball back and forth between themselves. Apparently, a competitive game was more fun than the cooperative one they began with.

So, yes, football may be noted as a British game...but I have a feeling that it would have arisen anywhere else, given the tools of but a ball and two teams to compete for it. It even seems to arise spontaneously, from children at play - children who have not been exposed to the game, at all.

Then again, to say that football is inevitable, is not to say that it is without its skill. Football is inevitable, but David Beckham (and the like) are not: that takes a lot more than the typical kids at play scenario.

Nevertheless, I enjoyed watching the spontaneous generation of football, today.
(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and seven months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, five years exactly, and Tiarnan, twenty-eight months, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, wunderkind, wonderkind, genio, гений ребенок prodigy, genie, μεγαλοφυία θαύμα παιδιών, bambino, kind.

We are the founders of Genghis Can, a copywriting, editing and proofreading agency, that handles all kinds of work, including technical and scientific material. If you need such services, or know someone who does, please go to: http://www.genghiscan.com/ Thanks.

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication prohibited. Use Only with Permission. Thank you.)

Victoria Beckham's Haircut and the idiocy of the modern world.

We live in the Time of the Idiot. This is clear to see when one looks at what is considered news.

A couple of days ago, Yahoo News carried a story about Victoria Beckham's new haircut. Apparently, the fact that she has cut her hair short warrants global communication. It is something that the whole modern world must know. The question is: why?

Why is it important for us to know of a change of haircut of someone who long ago stopped contributing anything to the world (if one considers her initial claim to fame - pop songs - a worthy contribution in the first place)? What does it matter if her hair is long, short, pink or balding? In truth, it is of no importance whatsoever - or it would be in a world that had its priorities right.

In a reasonable world, a world of values and rationality, none of us would know what Victoria Beckham's haircut looked like - quite simply because no-one would consider it important enough to communicate it. Her hair would remain on her head - but it would not be in our faces. Yet, sadly, perhaps tragically for Mankind and its future, we do know about Victoria Beckham's haircut. We are forced to know because it is thrust to the front page of Yahoo News and appears on hundreds of millions of browsers around the world. We have no choice but to know: it is there, before our eyes, when we check our mail (for many have a Yahoo account and perhaps another like Gmail, too).

We don't live in a reasonable world. We don't live in sensible world. We don't live in a world of values or proportion. We live in a mad world in which a young woman's haircut is thought of such earth-shattering merit that it must be known to all. Well, it isn't. Victoria Beckham is not important enough to know about. She doesn't merit any real attention. Her haircut, therefore, being but a part of the wholeness of Victoria, is of even less consequence. Neither should consume our attention. Yet, they do.

We live in a world where nonsense is purveyed as information, where emptiness is presented as knowledge. Victoria Beckham is a young woman. That is all. She is married to someone who has merit as a sportsman. That is all. She herself doesn't have much individual importance. Her haircut, therefore, should have none.

Now, I don't wish to pick on Mrs. Beckham. No doubt she makes a great wife to a great footballer. She once entertained many people with her pop songs. Yet, she doesn't, in any real sense, embody anything that should place her on our front pages every time she changes her haircut. In reality, no-one, AT ALL, merits discussion because of their haircut. A haircut is not important enough to communicate around the world. Our minds should not be filled with images of haircuts, our attention taken away from more important matters (like anything else at all). Yet, so it is. We live in the Time of the Idiot. A time when a haircut is of world importance - and where a pop song sets one on the same footing as major historical figures of lasting import.

Victoria Beckham's every move receives more attention, it seems, sometimes, than that of world leaders. Yet, the most major decision Victoria makes is which handbag to buy. Her decisions do not affect the lives and livelihoods of millions...so why, then, does she receive the attention of those whose decisions do have such importance? It is bizarre. It is also a purely modern phenomenon. There was a time when only people of true merit were famous. Now, some people are of very great fame but of very little worth. I will leave it to you to decide for yourself whether Victoria Beckham's worth is as great as her fame.

I would like a world in which news was news; a world in which all the information conveyed to me over every news channel had some baseline of merit and substance. Once, there was such a world. However, the modern era of mass media has dispelled it. Now, what is conveyed is not so much news, as entertainment. Victoria Beckham's haircut is not news, but it may be entertainment. However, the problem is, that the entertaining snippet of her latest haircut is conveyed as if it is news. It is time to draw a distinction between the two categories of information. News should fill news channels. Entertainment should be found elsewhere...

I wonder if my children will ever live to see a world in which news becomes news again. I wonder if they will see a time in which haircuts are, once again, matters of no consequence, and no-one knows of the Victoria Beckhams of the world. It is a world we used to have. It is a world I would like to see again.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and seven months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, five years exactly, and Tiarnan, twenty-eight months, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, wunderkind, wonderkind, genio, гений ребенок prodigy, genie, μεγαλοφυία θαύμα παιδιών, bambino, kind.

We are the founders of Genghis Can, a copywriting, editing and proofreading agency, that handles all kinds of work, including technical and scientific material. If you need such services, or know someone who does, please go to: http://www.genghiscan.com/ Thanks.)

A cause of death: legislation against fitness.

Singapore is undoubtedly the only country in the world with legislation against physical fitness.

Let me explain. Recently, I posted about Bangladeshis being forbidden to play football in a disused field. I wondered if this was a specific case of bias against them or if it is a general rule that no-one can just play football anywhere. I am assured, by Singaporean readers, that it is a general rule against football playing in public spaces.

Think about that for a moment. Singapore has a rule against youngsters playing football in spare ground - such as the grass near HDB estates. What, actually is this rule? It is a legislation against physical fitness. Few children will exercise methodically in a gym or on a track - but many will, without knowing it, do a great deal of exercise in the course of playing a game of football. Thus, in depriving youngsters of the freedom to play football when they please, they are also stunting their physical development and reducing their physical fitness.

Why should we care about this? Well, the recent deaths of two national servicemen, while exercising physically, has been blamed, by some commentators, on the reduced physical fitness of modern Singaporeans compared to their forebears. If this is the actual cause, then one has to consider whether rules against free physical play directly contributed to their deaths. Had football and the like, been allowed, just anywhere, there would have been more opportunities for physical play in these young men's childhoods. They would therefore have become fitter - and would have been better prepared for the rigours of National Service.

It is possible that both young men would be alive today, if physical fitness was encouraged by allowing children to do what they please, in the way of activity, wherever they please, instead of regulating it.

The more I come to understand Singapore, the more I come to realize that it is the strangest country I have ever lived in (out of the twenty or so I have visited).

Singapore loses more than the physical fitness of its children by these physical freedom limiting policies. They also prevent young sportsmen from developing. Singapore doesn't have a David Beckham -and they never will until children are given physical freedom, to play where they will.

Just to put David Beckham's accomplishment into perspective, into terms Singaporeans like to think about - his net worth is equivalent to a whole Cabinet full of government Ministers. (His most recent deal was around a quarter of a billion US dollars, as I understand it - and that is just one of the deals in his career).

So, I would like to see little footballers and other games players, busily at work in every spare corner of Singapore. It would be a fitter nation for it. There would most likely be fewer servicemen deaths - and there might even be a few international sporting stars to be proud of, as a result.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and five months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, four years and ten months, and Tiarnan, twenty-seven months, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, wunderkind, wonderkind, genio, гений ребенок prodigy, genie, μεγαλοφυία θαύμα παιδιών, bambino, kind)

The David Beckham of Singapore

Why doesn't Singapore have a David Beckham? Why are there no internationally illustrious sports stars? Well, recently I heard a story that provides a perfect explanation.

If you are a regular of my blog, you will recall a story I told you about a lecturer, who was an "expert in raising children", who spoke of toughening up the children of Singapore. He also spoke of something else.

He told a tale of a young Singaporean who loved to play football. Every day he would be out with his friends practising, or honing his skills, by himself. It was, for him, non-stop football. It was his consuming passion. Yet, his parents were not happy. He was not doing well at school. He neglected his books. They wanted him to study. So, they began to badger him. They involved professionals, too, to coax him back to the books. Their nagging and persuasions began to tell on him. Finally, one day, he stopped playing football and started to study. The football remained unused at home. No longer did he kick it daily. Instead, he began to apply himself to his books.

His parents were elated. They had won. No longer was their son "wasting his time" on football, now, he was deploying himself usefully at his studies. The lecturer seemed most pleased to be able to recount this tale of victory of the education system, over the frivolity of football. Yet, I saw something else entirely in that tale. They had persuaded an indifferent student, with no great interest in academia, to try harder at his studies - but at the expense of his lifelong passion. I doubt, very much, that he was happy studying, instead of playing football. I doubt he got that much out of it, too. Yet, because he had conformed, his teachers and his parents were happy. He was now doing what they wanted.

As anyone of imagination can see, however, there is a price to all this. Let us look at his future. Is it a better future to be an indifferent academic, with so-so grades, reluctantly acquired, than to be a passionate, experienced footballer, who lives for his sport? Which is the better life for him? Could he not have become a professional footballer? After all, even Singapore has professional football teams. Would he not have been happier as a footballer, than as anything else? Would he not, perhaps, have been more successful as a footballer than as anything else?

No-one should deny their passion, in life - nor allow others to persuade them not to pursue it. You see, I believe there is a reason for that passion. If you have such high motivation for something and love doing it - it is usually because you have a gift for it. You are expressing yourself more truly through doing what you love, than through doing what others wish you to. That boy is a born footballer. He should be a professional sportsman. If he had been a born academic, that would have been his passion - but it is not.

I think a great mistake has been made and a boy will not now, grow up to live his dream. Once again, in Singapore, we see the narrowness of its values, the limited range of what is permissible. A boy cannot be a footballer, here. He must be an academic. Well, tell that to David Beckham - and his parents. Beckham was a child whose early life was very similar to this Singaporean boy's: he lived for football, practised all the time, was forever out on a field with his "mates". What was the result? He became one of the most famous sportsmen in the world and is probably worth hundreds of millions of dollars (considering that his latest pay package is in the region of a quarter of a billion dollars for the contract period of a few years). Which is better then: to be a multi-millionaire sportsman - or to be a reluctant academic, with an average career thereafter?

Most Singaporean parents would never see the possibility of the former and will always push for the latter. Everyone plays safe. That is why Singapore doesn't have a David Beckham - and it never will, for as long as local values remain so narrow in their focus.

I only hope the boy starts to play football again - and auditions for a professional team. He would be a lot happier and fulfilled, that's for sure.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and one month, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, four years and seven months, and Tiarnan, two years exactly, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, gifted adults and gifted children in general. Thanks.)

Quality of memory: incidental knowledge

Ainan is very focussed on his scientific interests yet, surprisingly, he takes note of other things, too, in passing.

William James, the great 19th century American pioneer in the nascent science of Psychology made an interesting observation, on the types of memory people tend to have. He conceived of an understanding of great men: "When both memory and philosophy combine together in one person, then indeed we have the highest sort of intellectual efficiency. Your Walter Scotts, your Leibnitzes, your Gladstones, and your Goethes, all your folio copies of mankind, belong to this type."

Let me explain the background to this remark. This was given in his "Talk to Teachers" on memory. He observed that some people had the ability to recall random information that they were presented with. Their minds were "wax to receive, marble to retain". He further noted that, sometimes, such a great memory was found in a person otherwise ungifted in the "philosophic" department. By this he meant, yes, they have great memories - but they do not also possess high levels of intelligence. Today, we might call such individuals savants or the like - for he seems to be referring to such cases, as we would understand them, today.

However, he further noted that all combinations of types of mind were possible. Sometimes a person was both gifted in memory and in philosophical power of thinking. It is this type that he thinks of as great men - and used the geniuses above as examples of it. He further believed that such a combination was necessary for the highest accomplishment - the greatest of men (women not being afforded much opportunity in his day) tending to exhibit both faculties, to allow the necessary mental efficiency to accomplish their goals.

He clarified his understanding of memory by conceiving of the idea of "desultory memory" - this was the capacity to remember anything and everything without effort (his "wax to receive, marble to retain".) It is difficult for most of us to remember random information - but he noted that some people were adept at this, along with whatever other faculties they possessed.

Incidentally, "desultory" has a fascinating history as a word. It ultimately comes from the Latin, desultorius, the adjectival form of desultur, meaning "hasty, casual, superficial" but applied to mean "a rider in the circus who jumped from one horse to another while they are in gallop,". It therefore captures the ability of some people to be fluid in memory, too - to jump from one thing, to another, effortlessly.

So, in William James thinking, the most helpful memory, would be a desultory memory - one that allowed anything and everything to be learnt, incidentally, without really trying. Such a person would end up with a broad knowledge of just about everything, they encountered in life.

Now, back to Ainan.

This morning, Ainan was watching the Guiness Book of World Records on television, as I passed by. On the screen was a quiz about footballers and the question was: "Who is the highest paid footballer in the world?" There were three choices: David Beckham, Zinedine Zidane and a third that eludes me because, frankly, I wasn't paying much attention.

I noted something odd, however. As Ainan sat in front of the television, he pointed at the Zinedine Zidane and said: "Zidane". That, for me, was strange, because I knew, for certain, that Ainan had no interest whatsoever in football. We had taken him to try it once and he couldn't have been less enthused. I have never seen him watch a football match, either - so it was more than a little surprising that he should feel that he knew who was "the highest paid footballer in the world." I thought, to myself, that it must be David Beckham, so I paused in my journey about the house and waited for the television to answer the question.

At last the answer came: "Zinedine Zidane is the highest paid footballer in the world!" It then went onto to say that he had the not inconsiderable salary of $66 million US Dollars a year.

That really surprised me: Ainan had been right. This then called to mind, for me, the remark about desultory memory made by William James that I had first read of while reading irrelevantly at Cambridge University, two decades before, a text that would do me no good whatsoever in the exams ahead (they are the best texts to read, for then you might learn something new!)

It seems, if this example is any guide, that Ainan possesses that element of desultory memory that William James so prized. His sole true interests are scientific - and he has no interest in football - yet still he knew who the highest paid footballer in the world was.

The real surprise here is that, after 7 years of being his father, and observing him first hand, daily, that he is still able to surprise me. That points to something else: he is constantly evolving and growing. He is what he is - but he is also becoming. To be able to see that growth is one of the great pleasures of fatherhood (or indeed, parenthood).

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged seven years and eight months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, four years and one month, and Tiarnan, eighteen months, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, gifted adults and gifted children in general. Thanks.)

David Beckham, footballer and legend.

David Beckham. You didn't expect me to write those words, did you? Well, neither did I. It is just that I couldn't resist after hearing something about David Beckham, yesterday.

David Beckham is one of the most famous young men on Earth - but would you think of him as one of the brightest, too? Anyone who knew anything of him, from his interviews, is unlikely to think so. He comes across as a sweet but tongue-tied man, who finds it diffficult to express himself coherently in words. Yet, if there is one thing he is good at, it is PR. Either it is public relations, at work, or the global effect of Chinese Whispers has led to an interesting view of David Beckham, here in Singapore. Yesterday, a girl from Indonesia, who was twenty years old, told me this about David's life: "He went to Oxford University, but left without finishing his degree, because he wanted to focus on his football."

I greeted this with a long, almost reverent silence, that anyone could believe such a thing. Then I asked her: "Who told you that David Beckham went to Oxford?"

She couldn't remember where she got the information - but was sure of it. Now, either she had read it in a mistaken journalist's article - or had heard it from another, sometime - or she had imagined it. She was unable to source her knowledge. Yet, "know" it, she did.

Now, if you know anything about Oxford University, you would know how immensely difficult it is to get in. It is challenge as unlikely in its own way as becoming a leading professional footballer - but it is a very different kind of challenge. I cannot imagine, in anyway, that Beckham was ever a serious candidate for Oxford University - nor that he could have gained entrance. The internet confirms my view in that I couldn't find a confirmatory story. Indeed, he was a footballer by the age of 17 and, not being a child prodigy, did not have time to go to Oxford before then. So, clearly, this story about Beckham's aborted academic career is just that - a fiction, an urban legend of Indonesia. The question is, where did it come from? Was it a published source, perhaps the result of cheeky PR...or was it a mistaken journalist, perhaps conflating life stories, accidentally and coming up with this amazing tale - or was it a rumour started by an idolizing fan, for whom Beckham was a God? We shall never know, but it does point up one of the strange things that happens to the famous: people relate with confidence, information about them, which simply isn't true. Strangers adorn the life story of the famous one with embellishments and details, adoring additions that create something other than an image of the real person. Perhaps this only happens with a certain kind of celebrity. Perhaps it only happens with those who have popular mass appeal. I feel doubtful that it would happen to a serious individual famous for very sobre achievements - such as Richard Feynman. It may occur - but I somehow doubt it. However, whether or not it is a universal phenomenon of the famous - it is certain that it happens to some of them - and one of the victims of this is David Beckham, here in Asia.

I don't know how widespread this "information" about David Beckham is - but Indonesia is a very populous country (of almost a quarter of a billion people) and my informant came from a small town in Indonesia. It is a remarkable testament to the power of the media that she knew who Beckham was considering her isolated origins - but it is also an indication that perhaps this tale about Beckham's Oxford University days is widespread. If it is the product of a rumour, the rumour monger is, statistically, more likely to have come from a large city. Therefore, if this is so, the fact that the rumour had spread to a small town, in an isolated area, indicates that the rumour has spread far. This reasoning brings us to the hilarious conclusion that many Indonesians might believe that David Beckham, a man of no academic background or pretensions whatsoever, was an Oxford University drop-out.

I wonder what else is believed of Beckham around the world? What a strange thing fame can be.

(If you would like to read about Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged seven years and four months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, three, and Tiarnan, fourteen months, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, the creatively gifted, gifted adults and gifted children in general. Thanks.)